The Man Who Played with Samphire

It's been a great few days for our own produce (all my wife's work really) coming, literally, to fruition. The salad leaves are so much more interesting than the often-moribund bags of uniform green stuff you buy in the supermarket. Even the flowers on the bolting rocket are tasty - kind of hot and nutty - a bit like the way I get after too long in the sun. The strawberries are great too, and we had bumper helpings of them last night along with dollops of double cream.

Yesterday was wet and windy but we resolved to defy its grey menace and headed for the shore. We were just out for a stroll, trying to avoid the stir-crazy sensations that often take hold on the numerous rainy summer days here. As we headed towards the salt-flats we remembered that it was a good area for finding Samphire (really Common Glasswort Salicornia Europaea) at around this time of year. I've written about Samphire before (blog entry 'Walking on Samphire') but last time I picked it a little later in the year and it had started to get a bit 'woody'. The time window for picking it at its best must be rather short because it was quite small when we picked it yesterday. Looks like the first week of August might be ideal. We tried to nip of just the top part of the larger growths, leaving the lower part and roots in place to, hopefully, sprout again.

We collected up the salad leaves and strawberries from the garden on our way home from the shore, and also dug up some small garlic bulbs. I made some mojo with the garlic and a slightly-squishy avocado. I spread some of the mojo on a couple of salmon fillets then baked them in foil parcels in the oven for 20 minutes. We ate the salmon along with the blanched, buttered and peppered samphire and the dressed salad leaves to which I had added a few chunks of feta cheese.

I've just opened the window. The sun is now blazing down and has dried up the saturated deck in short order. It's going to be a beautiful day so I intend to get my work done then go out and enjoy it. Better than getting hot and nutty in here.